Pirate Ship Birthday Cake Tutorial

Do you have a babe who loves pirates? Well we do. So when we had a birthday approach, there was no question, what type of birthday cake we would have. A pirate ship birthday cake is not just easy, its delicious too! So come on ye scury scrubs, grab a sword (or a knife) and come a long for the ride!

I recommend using Peggy's famous Nelson Cake recipe for your cake base, you can find the recipe here: http://thepurpleapple-lavender.blogspot.com/2015/01/nelson-cake_7.html

But like the saying goes, fresh is best unless you're stressed. So if you want to use a boxed cake mix and pre whipped frosting, I won't tell anyone. I know how things can be right before a birthday party...

Directions:

Make two 9x13 cakes. Make sure you butter your baking dishes really well so the cake slides out when it's done cooking. I found it helpful to refridgerate the cakes for at least a couple of hours before removing them from the pans. Take one of the cakes and if its facing you horizontally, slice the middle third of the cake out. Stack the remaining two edge peices on the top of the other whole cake. Take the slice you made and put stack it on one of the ends, so you essentially have one side that is 3 layers of cake wide. Then shape front of the cake to look pointed like a boat. I pushed some straws down through the cake layers to help hold them together and give them some stability. You could add frosting between the layers too. This makes it look prettier when sliced.

Then simply frost your entire cake. I add pirouette cookies to the front to look like railings, kit kats for the doors, pretzels for the back deck railing, and chocolate malt balls as cannons. I also added some chocolate chops to the side to look like the port windows. Then I drew a skull and cross bones onto a black peices of construction paper, and used skewers to make the sails. Then I added my sons pirate figurines and added some blue frosting along the sides to make it look like water. Adding double the amount of water your frosting recipe calls for will make the frosting actually set up and look like real water.

There you have it mateys! This can all be acomplished during one nap time too. What's better than that! Yo ho!